People in Police Beat 1112 in Chicago reflect on the violence

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With her new book, Lives of the Imaginary Artists in Cold War California, Monica Steinberg takes us into the world of artists who concealed or fabricated their identities, using pseudonymity, obfuscation, anonymity, (auto)biografiction, imaginary portraiture, heteronymity, role-playing, doubling, and alter ego. These real artists, through their creation of imaginary artists,

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Brighten Your Winter Day with Images from “Gems and the New Science”

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The winter solstice may be behind us, but the Chicago region is still gripped by wintry gloom. We’re brightening our day with a few images from Gems and the New Science: Matter and Value in the Scientific Revolution by Michael Bycroft. In this book, Bycroft argues that gems were connected

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Five Questions with Elizabeth Mitchell Elder, author of “Company Towns”

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In Company Towns, Elizabeth Mitchell Elder examines the long-lasting political legacies of mining-company dominance in the Midwest and Appalachia. While the economic consequences of deindustrialization are well-known, Elder shifts the focus to a more insidious problem: the political dysfunction that took root long before the mines shut down. Elder charts

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A Conversation on Writing, Craft, and Poetry

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Read on below for a conversation between CavanKerry Press authors Dorsía Smith Silva (In Inheritance of Drowning) and Cati Porter (The Body at a Loss) about their writing journeys and the craft of poetry. Cati Porter: Dorsía, you read and reviewed my first poetry collection, Seven Floors Up, for a

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Five Questions with Alison Bashford, author of “Decoding the Hand”

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Decoding the Hand is an astounding history of magic, medicine, and science, of an enduring search for how our bodily surfaces might reveal an inner self. From sixteenth-century occult physicians to twentieth-century geneticists, and from criminologists to eugenicists, award-winning historian Alison Bashford takes us on a remarkable journey into the

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Read an Excerpt from “Atlas’s Bones” by D. Vance Smith

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Five Questions for Joshua B. Freeman, Author of “Garden Apartments”

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In his new book, eminent historian Joshua B. Freeman turns his attention to an overlooked feature of the American landscape: garden apartments. He details their outsized influence on housing and social policy, helping improve living standards for working people. Inspired by the architectural innovations and socialist politics of British garden

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Five Questions with Cynthia Cruz, poet and author of “Sweet Repetition”

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As we continue to celebrate the amazing writers, editors, and translators in our Phoenix Poets series, we’re delighted to highlight poet Cynthia Cruz, whose latest poetry collection, Sweet Repetition, published with the series in October. Sweet Repetition centers its movement on repetition and return, integrating Lacanian and Freudian psychoanalysis, continental

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Read an Excerpt from “The Adaptability Paradox” by Stephen Skowronek

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Faith in the resilience and adaptability of the US Constitution rests on a long history of finding new ways to make the system work. In The Adaptability Paradox, political scientist Stephen Skowronek examines the rearrangements that regenerated the American government in the past and brings that experience to bear on

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We continue our conversations with about violence and possible solutions with residents of Police Beat 1112 on Chicago's west side. Host: Lisa Labuz; Reporter: Chip Mitchell